Organizational leaders throughout the nation, throughout the world even, have found that empowered employees work more productively, more happily, more healthfully. While the concept of delegation has been around for thousands of years, the concept of empowerment is a more recent outgrowth of the quality movement.

There are some parallels between delegation and empowerment. The latter, however, requires a greater amount of trust. Delegation is more limited in scope and duration than empowerment. When a manager delegates, he is essentially asking an employee to take charge of a task and see it through to completion. The employee may not ever do that particular task again. Responsibility is limited for both the delegator and the delegatee.

By contrast, an employee who is empowered is in a permanent state of heightened responsibility and authority. He has demonstrated competence and so has earned the ongoing trust of his manager. At this elevated level, the employee may be given the authority to manage a certain project. Or, he may feel sufficiently empowered to request a certain project be assigned to him. Thus, empowerment is more like a two-way street than is delegation.

There are two simple ways to determine the degree of empowerment you and co-workers have (or believe you have). First, imagine your immediate supervisor has suddenly learned he cannot return to work for the next three months. You have just received an e-mail explaining his absence and telling you how to carry on in his absence. What are his instructions likely to say?

1. Ask the same question of at least five others in your department, i.e., what would the boss probably say in terms of what has to be done and how it should be done while he is not there? After this informal poll, analyze the answers. Within them typically lies a fairly accurate assessment of the culture of empowerment.

2. On a scale of 1 (absolutely unempowered) to 5 (fully empowered), how empowered do you feel you are? Now, ask the same question of as many other people in your department as you can. While reality and perceptions often diverge, you will probably find most people giving the same answer. If the numbers fall primarily in the 1 and 2 range, determine what factors are leading people to feel unempowered. Similarly, if the numbers are primarily 4's and 5's, ascertain what conditions are enabling people to feel so empowered. In either case, work to eliminate the negative forces and to increase the positive ones.